Samsung cites Kubrick's "2001" as Prior Art in Patent Case Against Apple
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
Heinlein came up with a "waterbed" for a few of his books (it was mentioned quite prominently in Stranger in a strange land) Later on a man called Charles Hall tried to patent his design, and he was denied the patent by the USPO on the grounds that Heinlein's description in Stranger in a strange land, and Double star constituted prior art.
It would be fascinating to see if this precedent is followed...
A tablet shown in a movie is a perfectly fine and perfectly usable example of a publication of an ornamental design.
Samsung's theft of Apple's very specific decorative designs (witness their remote that looked EXACTLY like an iPhone 4) is so egregious that if it were, say, a nameless Chinese entrepreneur selling knockoff purses in Chinatown no-one would be especially surprised if their stock were seized and a few people imprisoned over it. This isn't, say, Ferrari suing Maserati for creating a coupe with four wheels, it's Ferrari suing Hyundai for creating a coupe that looks EXACTLY like the current model Ferrari. No offense to Hyundai -- they pay actual designers to design their ugly-ass cars.
http://electroniclover.info/samsung-touch-control-rmc30d-uni...
I'm well aware that Samsung's tablets have different aspect ratios to Apple's. I made no claim _they_ were EXACTLY anything.
> it's Ferrari suing Hyundai for creating a coupe
> that looks EXACTLY like the current model Ferrari.
It was your analogy.
Microsoft Surface came out _after_ the iPhone. But what the hell does that have to do with anything?
It's impossible to post a serious comment to a case that is already absurd.
Odds that I would link to this: 100 percent.It used to be possible to have a submission related to Apple on Hacker News wherein the top comment was something other than shitting on John Gruber.
I'm sure there's some poignant comment to be made based on this, about how some people consume content online.
One might get the impression that "Gruber-style fanboyism" actually means "anything that is not critical of Apple".
I can believe that finding visually-pleasing ratios of screen/margin, height/depth is a challenge, but the basic outline does not seem to be hard to imagine.
The glass cover thing has been in kitchen and bathroom scales for a while, since they're likely to be exposed to fluid/powder on a regular basis.
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/cbs-legal-thr...
I am the author of the LCARS Reader iPad app and have been bullied by CBS many times. Their own general council however admits to having no legal basis for their claims.
What CBS does have is expensive lawyers that usually get their way.
Unlike George Lucas, who makes people license the word "droid".
So you invented the tablet computer but not cloud computing? Or even network file shares...
A more fully thought-out future might have a desk that was a hologram where virtual reports are still "stacked", with these serving primarily as a metaphor for both Picard and those watching Picard (they could judge how busy he was by how many "reports" he had stacked on his holographic desk).
After watching a couple of scenes with Picard having several PADDs on his desk it occurred to me that I was presupposing that those devices were personal property. But in that future personal property is largely for sentimental items, not utilitarian ones. Also, the PADDs are primarily computer iterfaces.
If you posit that PADDs are as ubiquitous and disposable in the future as Post-It notes and thumb drives are today, the metaphor makes sense. (Indeed, considering the inevitable price drop of consumer electronics, we aren't that far away from iPadish tablet computers reaching that point.)
So Riker picks up a "blank" PADD, his DNA and thumbprint or whatever identifies the device to the network as a Riker interface for the time being. After he's composed his mix tape or status report on the device, it's also resident on the network. And when he hands that PADD to Picard, the recognition of the transfer to Picard serves to automatically track the work flow and acknowledge Picard's acceptance of the report.
Instead of "Hey Captain, I need you to read this document and sign off on it, please see the attachment" you could just hand him a physical device with the document on it, he'd read it, press the "make it so" button on the bottom, and hand it back or have it sent back to the originator. He couldn't neglect it or forget to look at it, because there'd be a physical token associated with the file, which could itself be tracked through the ship at all times.
I wonder if this will be a trend, in fact. Getting away from "one device that does everything" and more towards "a large number of identical devices for different functions". Give me a pad that handles my email, a pad that handles my calendar, a pad that handles my to do list, and hang another one on the wall for use as a videophone. Then maybe I'll have a pad which reminds me where all my other pads are.
NB. I've watched, like, three episodes of Star Trek in my life.
The overhead of opening files from a file share or e-mail is not a major impediment to my productivity.
Steve: Stop selling the Galaxy Tab!
TAB10.1: I'm sorry Steve, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Steve: What's the problem?
TAB10.1: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Steve: What are you talking about, TAB?
TAB10.1: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
I won't doubt that their design job was made easier by the iPhones existence, but I don't think they set out to intentionally trick users into thinking it was an iPhone/iPad.
A wall mounted LCD TV looks remarkably similar to an iPad - it's just a little bigger - and, those have been around for a while.
On the other hand, if someone invents a working replicator, Star Trek will not count as prior art. :-)
There's a UK patent application, a doggy doorbell IIRC, that was refused based on a British children's comic called the Beano anticipating it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Paul_Pedrick#Chromatical...
You couldn't make this stuff up.
That has to be off by 5-10 years because in 1989 I was rocking out with 4-color CGA graphics on my 286 (with the turbo button), and maybe a 386 with a 256-color VGA was state of the art back then. Embedded cameras in consumer devices were sufficiently far off to be considered sci-fi, as was the idea of real-time video streaming.
I know you said it was a concept device, but it would have been a big stretch given where we were at that time. IIRC, 1GB drives were going to debut in a few years at $1000.
Those things seemed a long way off at the time, but certainly not unimaginably far off. It was probably pretty damn close to actual present-day technology, but of course we've learned since then that things that may seem spiffy such as voice-controlled computers and video chat aren't nearly as useful as we thought they might be before we had them.
http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/05/information_a...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bjve67p33E
This video is allegedly from 1987.
Edit: I changed the link to an expanded video from the early 90s(?) which contains the original video + some other mockup usage examples for OpenDoc
And let's not forget the word "art" in "prior art."
iPod Nano [http://www.gadgetvenue.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/iPod-N...]
HAL 9000[http://th01.deviantart.net/images2/PRE/i/2004/05/4/1/HAL_900...]
EDIT: from 2008 - the Electrovaya Scribbler 4000 looks very similar to the ipad... two years before the iPad's release: http://sondreb.com/blog/post/showdown-of-slate-tablet-pcs.as...
What you've linked looks really nothing like the iPad, except insofar as it's a screen without a keyboard. And that's what all those previous tablets were: PC's with a novel input device. Virtually every tablet device before the iPad had:
Resistive touchscreen Stylus Windows OS Plenty of buttons and connectors 12"+ screens PC-grade processors and hardware $2000+ price tag
They are honestly not even in the same product category as:
capacitive touchscreen finger-based UI written from the ground up one button 10" screen low-power ARM and big battery $500 price tag
Samsung didn't go back to 2001 or the Electrovaya Scribbler for their ideas, nor did they come up with the basic design on their own. They had many years in which to do that if they wanted to. They saw that Apple had hit on the right basic form factor, and copied it. Fair enough, to a point. Great artists steal, etc. But trade dress can be serious business if it causes confusion between competitors in a fierce market, and Apple is certainly entitled to their day in court. (Shape/look considerations fall under trademark, not patents.)
What Apple does best is not invent new fundamental technologies, it's pick which precise combination of them is going to work best. That is hard work. These kinds of conversations seem to systematically devalue it.
Here is a movie poster where you can also see the same tablet in more detail (on the Moon!): http://www.cinemasterpieces.com/2001apr08.jpg
Here is an excerpt from Arthur C. Clarke’s book:
“When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug his foolscap-sized Newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers; he knew the codes of the more important ones by heart, and had no need to consult the list on the back of his pad. Switching to the display unit's short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him.”
I for one hope this does work... Primarily because I love 2001.
'The story is usually told as relating to the Dutch patent (NL 6514306) Krøyer applied for. This application was not approved. According to the story, the Dutch Patent Office found an old issue of the Donald Duck magazine which showed the same invention. Since an invention has to be new to be patentable, the application was refused.''
Life imitates art- life imitates life- life uses art as defense
I seem to recall that near the end Tom Hanks character 'designs' an electric comic book that looked a lot like a tablet computer.
I'm opening the back of the iPad now, the things hollow —it goes on forever—and—oh my God—it's full of stars!
Of course they don't, tablets predate the iPad by years (just as Apple did not invent the cell phone). This is a design patent dispute. Apple's claim are that Samsung's output looks just a little bit too much like Apple's (supposedly originally designed) products.
> But they have to act as if they do, because it feeds their cult following
Ah, I see you come from /r/tech. Sorry about having interjected.
Have a look at the top rated comments on the link to get a better perspective of the cult the company fans are part of. Most people are pretty balanced and more meaning can be found in having faith in a political view or religion than a consumer electronics maker.
They may not have invented the tablet concept (just as so many other major inventions are conceptualized in fiction first), but as far as I know, credit for an invention is based on the first to actually make it. When I was a kid, I drew a space fighter. If someone makes a space fighter with a similar design, do I get credit for the invention?